Breasted experiences in pregnancy: an examination through photographs

Drawing on qualitative data from a sample of pregnant women in Hobart, Australia this article uses ‘feminist’ ‘memory work’ and the ‘photovoice’ method as frames for discussing the ways in which interviews and participant-produced photographs may be used to trace and understand pregnant embodiment. I argue that digital photographs taken by women during pregnancy can reveal important information about how they negotiate their own experiences of breastedness and wearing maternity underwear over time. Here, the concept of ‘breastedness’ itself is expanded as women’s individual embodied experiences of pregnancy are reflected in the production and viewing of their own photographic images.     

Othering the ‘leaky body’. An autoethnographic story about expressing breast milk in the workplace

In this paper, I present an autoethnographic story about my experiences of expressing breast milk at a Dutch university department. My story illustrates how interrelated and conflicting discourses about gender, motherhood, breastfeeding, embodiment and professionalism raised issues about (in)visibility, embodied control, spatiality and discipline of my body and shaped my experience as a newly maternal employee. This paper thus aims to include bodies and embodied experiences in organization studies and highlights the need to consider spatiality as an important topic of research. I address these issues in my writing and use insights from feminist poststructuralism to show how the experiences I describe are part of a larger cultural framework of power structures that produce the ‘leaky’ maternal body as the Other, subject to (self-)discipline and marginalization. I hope my story inspires reflexivity and empathic understanding of the complex reality of experiences related to expressing breast milk in the workplace.     

Pregnant Bodies in Social Context: Natural,Disruptive, and Unrecognized Pregnancy

This article examines the role of social context in the construction of meanings attached to the pregnant body. Analyzing interviews with 42 women who, during the time of the interview, were either pregnant or had given birth to a child within the last 12 months, I explore (1) the role of social context in assigning social value to the pregnant body; and (2) how the meaning attached to pregnancy changes as pregnant women move from one social context to another. I suggest that the role of social context is central to our understanding of how pregnant women are perceived and evaluated by others.     

Fertility treatment and organizational discourses of the non-reproductive female body

This paper contributes to debates on the intersections between organizations, the body, and reproduction by exploring how the non-reproductive female body is discursively (re)constructed by organizations which provide fertility treatment, such as private clinics and fertility magazines. Organization studies has neglected the non-reproductive body, despite a fair amount of research on its reproductive counterpart, especially pregnant and maternal bodies. Equally, these discussions privilege the employment relationship – for example, how women are enjoined to manage their bodies at work – whereas we concentrate on the marketplace, or the field of fertility treatment, and the organizations therein. These organizations, while focused on reproducing bodies, also influence, compound, and challenge notions of the bodies they are involved with. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of texts produced by UK fertility organizations, we present three discourses of the non-reproductive female body that (re)generate subject positions where the absence of reproduction is a medical condition, an emotionally distressing experience, and something that needs to be cared for. Our argument suggests how the texts can operate as a form of Foucauldian governmental biopower, emphasizing how they hail the infertile female subject.     

Making Sense of Muscle: The Body Experiences of Collegiate Women Athletes*

Using ethnographic research, this paper explores the experiences of elite women athletes on a Division‐I college soccer team. I draw on existing literature in the sociology of sport, sociology of the body, and interactionism to inform my analysis. With this approach, I illustrate the complicated relationship women athletes have with their bodies in relation to physical competition and dominant notions of femininity today. Key reference groups influenced the players’ self‐perceptions and encouraged the women to closely monitor their own appearances and actions. While undoubtedly affected by these inter‐actions as well as their place in the gender hierarchy, many women athletes subtly resisted notions of idealized bodies and constructed their own meanings about their bodies and experiences. Investigating the day‐to‐day body awareness and negotiations of women athletes reveals the gendered nuances of sport and the complicated relationship between cultural ideals and female embodiment.     

"Everyone with Eyes Can See the Problem": Moral Citizens and the Space of Irish Nationhood

This paper examines Ireland's 2004 Constitutional Amendment which removes birthright citizenship from any future Irish‐born children of immigrant parents. I argue that for particular historical reasons, the ability of the state to convince its citizens of the necessity for this Amendment was remarkable and I suggest that it was able to do so by constructing citizenship as a moral regime and foreign‐nationals and their foetuses as ‘suspect patriots.’ I describe how the notion of immorality is laminated upon black bodies — specifically black pregnant women — and how the presence of black migrant workers, refugees and asylees consequently comes to be experienced in Irish national space as transgressive, their political subjecthood constrained by the supposedly legible abjectivity of their bodies. The issue of race remains unenunciated, and yet, as the Minister for Justice stated during the referendum debate, ‘anyone with eyes can see the problem.’ The Irish government's privileging of moral rather than cultural incommensurability is strikingly similar to culturalist rhetorics of exclusion that are often invoked when race is at issue in European public debate on immigration. Configured upon, and therefore experienced as a type of body, immorality becomes an alibi for race and is naturalized as a form of exclusion and as a potential site of state intervention in the form of xenophobic legislation and policymaking. Reading this decision as merely racist however, fails to give voice to the experiences of Irish Citizens who voted for this Amendment. Their struggle to build a “New Ireland” and to accept a multiculturalist framework in the face of neo‐liberal restructuring policies and a European‐wide retreat from the welfare state must be considered as being in dialectical tension with the ideological smearing of immigrants if we are to fully grasp the complex interaction between relations of power and the privileging of difference.     

Walking an Emotional Tightrope: Managing Emotions in a Women's Prison

Until recently, the emotional experiences of women in prison have been overlooked by symbolic interactionists and social scientists. Similarly, research relevant to the sociology of emotions has not been explored in the social context of a correctional institution for women. The purpose of this study is to investigate emotional experiences from the unique perspective of incarcerated women. This research examines how women in prison perceive and manage their emotional lives while confined and asks whether their chosen strategies have an impact on their interactions and thus affect the institutional environment. Data were collected through in‐depth interviews with thirty‐five women incarcerated in a correctional institution located in the midwestern United States. Using a semistructured interview schedule, respondents were asked about a range of topics, one of which involved their emotional lives while incarcerated. Findings indicate these women define their emotional experiences as being simultaneously provocative and constrained. Respondents suggest that their emotional resources are individually, contextually, and culturally grounded. They discuss employing various strategies to manage their emotional lives while incarcerated, including diversions, spiritual pursuits, blocking exercises, self‐reflection, and humor. The majority of the techniques employed to control emotions are intrapersonal. Respondents describe personal efforts designed to manage their emotional experiences rather than share their feelings with others.     

Male and Female Sexuality During Pregnancy:

We studied male and female sexual behavior and satisfaction during pregnancy. Expectant fathers were less emotionally satisfied than their wives through the pregnancy. Relative to their husbands, women experienced more conflict and guilt, but reported feeling peaceful and fulfilled in pregnancy, more self-accepting sexually, and derived more pleasure from sex. Both women and men underestimated how attractive their partner found the woman's pregnant body, with men finding their wives more attractive. There were no significant differences in level of sexual desire or sexual satisfaction between men and women. A series of multiple regressions identified a number of variables as predictive of male and female sexual satisfaction. Comparing pregnant couples expecting their first child with normative da:a, we found that expectant couples were less satisfied with the frequency of sex and also derived less sexual pleasure than nonpregnant couples.     

“I Am Not a Prostitute”: How Young Black Women Challenge Street-based Micro-interactional Assaults

ABSTRACT

Few scholars have examined the collective experiences of young African American women living in the inner city and their strategies for navigating daily life there. I draw on nearly two years of field research in Central East Oakland, CA, to provide an ethnographic account of the daily experiences of poor young black women in urban public space¹. I uncover a particular and routine type of public encounter, street-based micro-interactional assaults, that follow a pattern and are shaped by an act or a threat of sexual violence. I also examine how poor black women feel about and negotiate these events while trying to maintain their own safety.     

The sacred dimensions of pregnancy and birth

This paper is an exploratory study of the ways pregnant women in American society are elevated to a sacred status and symbolically marked as moving through a rite of passage. Utilizing insights of Emile Durkheim, Henri Hubert, Marcel Mauss, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Arnold Van Gennep, it analyzes interviews with four women pregnant six to seven months and two women who had recently given birth. The analysis underscores how changes in the ways these women were treated by others, and changes in their dietary and hygienic habits, acted to place them in a special social category. The paper suggests that further research is needed into the roots of these sacralizing behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of this frame of analysis in expanding our understanding of many of the burning social dilemmas currently revolving around the event of pregnancy.Dedicated to the memory of Howard Balin, M.D.I want to thank Harold Bershady, Charles Bosk, Renee Fox, and Adam Weisberger for their contributions to my thinking on this subject and their help and advice in the writing of this paper.     

(In)visibility: accounts of embodiment of women with physical disabilities and differences

This qualitative study explored relationships between contemporary western cultural representations of bodies and the experiences of women born with physical disabilities and differences. In multiple, in-depth interviews, 14 women described the ways their embodiments are shaped by cultural discourses of disability, difference and gender. The findings indicated myriad ways in which the participating women experienced their embodied selves, paradoxically as both invisible and visible across sociomaterial places. Given the narrow range of normative appearances and capacities of 'acceptable' bodies, the women's bodies were frequently seen as undesirable whereas their subjectivities and lives were rendered invisible. The women articulated accounts of imposed ways of being seen by others and how these views structured and delimited their agency and resistances. This article highlights the fluid and multiple ways embodiment is produced, seen and experienced, and the importance of taking into account the interplay of gender with experiences of physical disability and difference.     

The storyscapes of teenage pregnancy. On morality,embodiment, and narrative agency

Young women tell different stories about teenage pregnancies. Their stories are embedded in the storyscape of their environment, which offers a limited set of narratives. Normative discourses influence the stories young women tell about their pregnancies. Social norms and stigma play an important role in the construction of the meaning of teenage pregnancies. However, the embodiment of being pregnant constitutes meaning as well. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study conducted in 2015 among 46 young Dutch women who got pregnant before their 20th birthday. Our study explores how young women navigate the moral arena when they are confronted with a teenage pregnancy and which role the embodiment of pregnancy plays in the construction of social meanings. The concept of storyscapes visualises how young women are constrained by their embeddedness in multiple storyscapes, defined by different and often contrasting audiences. Nevertheless, our study indicates that the momentum of pregnancy can offer agentic possibilities to take up another position towards their social environment and develop narrative agency.     

Beliefs and Behaviors of Pregnant Women with Addictions Awaiting Treatment Initiation

Substance use during pregnancy poses clear risks to children’s healthy development. However, women with addictions face unique barriers to accessing substance abuse treatment and often delay or avoid treatment seeking. The objective of this study was to examine women’s beliefs about the impact of use on the developing baby and to examine the protective behaviors that women with addictions engage in during the period of time between when they first find out they are pregnant and when they begin substance abuse treatment. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 women who were either pregnant or postpartum and who had used illicit substances during pregnancy. All participants were currently receiving inpatient substance abuse treatment services to address their addiction and were asked to retrospectively report on their experiences. Interviews were transcribed, imported into a qualitative data analysis software, and iteratively coded for themes. Women reported being concerned about the impact of substance use on the developing baby, in particular, about the physical and long-term developmental consequences of prenatal exposure. Given these concerns, women described trying to protect the baby from harm on their own, outside of accessing traditional treatment services. They sought information anonymously, increased their engagement in health-promoting behaviors, and decreased their use of alcohol and other drugs. The results suggest that women who use alcohol and other drugs during pregnancy are often motivated to protect their baby from harm and are engaging in harm reduction behaviors prior to accessing treatment services.     

Gender, Class Aspirations, and Emerging Fields of Body Work in Urban India

If some research indicates that bodies are becoming central to the life projects of “new liberal Indian” women, public debates simultaneously reveal that their bodies are entangled in satisfying traditional and modern ideals of womanhood. There are few studies, though, that have looked into how women reconcile and make use of contradictory cultural signals surrounding their bodies that arise out of a rapidly changing gender and class structure. We draw upon both followers and critics of Bourdieu to show that bodily concerns and undertakings of 48 urban Indian women, and the ways in which they resist and embrace cultural demands on their bodies, vary by social class locations. The women in the study who were most keenly aware of “options” embedded in thin or fit bodies were the ones who could take advantage of new careers and styles of living that the global economy was bringing to their doorsteps. In contrast, women who saw limited prospects for social mobility were unconvinced of the symbolic value of a thin body and rejected appearance concerns on the ground that it interfered with their mothering responsibilities. We conclude that while the fit body has indeed emerged as an important site of self-making for the modern Indian woman, the degree to which she sees costs and benefits involved in the bodywork of losing weight depends on her class location.     

Adolescents' Pregnancy Intentions, Wantedness, and Regret: Cross-Lagged Relations With Mental Health and Harsh Parenting

The authors used cross-lagged analyses to examine the across-time influences on and consequences of adolescents' pregnancy intentions, wantedness, and regret. One hundred pregnant Latina adolescents were studied during pregnancy and at 6 and 12 months postpartum. The results revealed 4 main findings: (a) similar to what has been found in adult women, adolescents' lower prenatal pregnancy intendedness and wantedness predicted initial difficulties in parenting; (b) frequent depression symptoms predicted subsequent lower pregnancy intendedness and wantedness; (c) adolescents' poor mental health and harsh parenting of their child predicted subsequent higher childbearing regret, and (d) high childbearing regret and parenting stress were reciprocally related across time. In addition, adolescents' wantedness of their pregnancy declined prenatally to postbirth, and strong pregnancy intendedness and wantedness were not concurrently related to adolescents' poor prenatal mental health. The findings reveal how adolescents' thoughts and feelings about their pregnancies are influenced by and predictive of their mental health and parenting experiences.     

Looking at bodies: Insights and inquiries about DES-related cancer

This paper considers the symbolic and material meanings about gender and sexuality surrounding women's bodies. To do so, it interprets three vignettes from an ongoing study of the experiences of women who have had vaginal and cervical cancer, as a result of their prenatal exposure to DES (diethylstilbestrol), a synthetic estrogen prescribed to pregnant women to prevent miscarriage. Each vignette represents a different social and political context. The paper demonstrates how the different contexts construct meaning, and explores the implications of this for understanding the ambivalent, complicated, shifting, and contested meanings of women's bodies. A version of this paper was presented at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, March 19, 1994, Baltimore, Maryland. Thanks are due to Kathy Davis, Elliot Mishaler, Connie Nathanson, Alexandra Todd, the DES Cancer Network and individual DES cancer daughters whom we interviewed and who commented on drafts of our work.     

Biopower and Reproductive Loss

Extensive research indicates that mothers in particular grieve a variety of losses – miscarriage, stillbirth, ectopic pregnancy, induced abortions, newborn deaths – at all gestational stages, yet often find their grief invalidated. In turn, the lack of support or affirmation of these grief responses can be experienced as an exacerbation of the initial impact of death. This painful social silence that parents have expressed as part of their reproductive loss serves as the foundation for this paper, which explores both the strategic silences and discourses in the network of knowledges constituting reproductive loss in an era of biopower. The first section of the paper outlines the (bio)medicalization of the pregnant-unborn body, tracing this process through the deployment of sexuality that socialized fertility and the female body in the early eighteenth century. The second section discusses the responsibilization of the pregnant-unborn body through the technology of risk. Here I show how death infuses the discourse of state intervention in mortality rates, but as a strategic silence mobilizing the ethics of responsibility while never revealing the limits of biopower or the state's promise to foster, protect and enhance life. The third section turns to two discursive strategies tying the pregnant body and the foetal body in relation of responsibility: antenatal care and the reduction of perinatal mortality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies. These serve as more specific illustrations of how reproductive loss is taken up in politics of risk that remains in the biomedical understanding of pregnancy and childbirth today. I conclude with some reflections on the intercorporeality of becoming-unborn and becoming-death, connecting the struggle of parents bereaved by reproductive loss with a broader struggle to move beyond the biomedical control of life and death in an era of biopower.     

A part of,yet apart from the team: Substantive membership and belonging of trans and nonbinary athletes

Increasingly, bills and policies prohibit the participation of trans women in competitive sport. The current sociopolitical moment begs the following question: how do interpersonal interactional moments function alongside formal policies and rules to shape trans athletes’ experiences of belonging in sport? Although formal institutional rules govern trans athletes’ ability to compete in sport, informal social sanctioning also denies these athletes equitable, or even de facto, membership in sport. I draw upon two case studies to explore trans athletes’ experiences of membership in elite “women's” sport. I apply Evelyn Nakano Glenn's work on citizenship to consider how trans athletes’ experiences of belonging are influenced by both formal rules imposed by organizations as well as informal social interactions with members of their sporting communities. Inclusion is not synonymous with membership. Trans athletes render visible the ways in which this system functions to contain the diversity of humanity's gender expression.     

(Un)Knowing the Rules of the Game: Young Men’s Precarious Talk About “Territory Marking” in Rural Aotearoa/New Zealand

Research strongly suggests that the social conditions characteristic of rural communities impact gendered experiences of and beliefs about (hetero)romantic relationships. Largely, this is argued because of the privileging of heteronormative-gendered roles within rural areas. What also is argued is that this privileging of heteronormativity correlates with the statistically higher rates of oppressive strategies that men are able to use to control their romantic partners. This article contributes to this body of work by analyzing how younger men from a rural high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand talked about the practice of “territory marking,” which involves men using physical violence against one another over women. What was most striking about their talk was how they spoke about this practice, as it was littered with a range of precarious elements. This meant that while it appeared cogent in places, it was also decidedly unknowing, fanciful, and ambiguous. This article will consider what this precarious talk says about how these young men cultivated a rural habitus, motivating them to articulate how idealized masculine bodies should function within public rural spaces. It will also be discussed how the precarious features of their talk signal how such idealized versions of masculinity could be destabilized.